To Boldly Goof

I was thinking that my blog could benefit from a light post, but writing about the Trump campaign seemed too easy. Fortunately, Ted Cruz provided an irresistibly geeky opportunity that ties-in nicely with a topic I have touched on a few times before.

The Republican presidential hopeful/clown car passenger opined in a New York Times interview this week that Star Trek's Captain Kirk would be a Republican. "I think it is quite likely that Kirk is a Republican and Picard is a Democrat." My initial reaction to the MSNBC headline was "Um, because Kirk did not honor the Prime Directive and thus the rule of law?"

Well, no, not exactly. Cruz reasons this is because, "Kirk is working class; Picard is an aristocrat. Kirk is a passionate fighter for justice; Picard is a cerebral philosopher."

I could quote Thomas Frank at length about how conservatives have not only duped many working class Americans into voting against their own economic interests, but counterfeited the working class banner as well, but I won't. Of course, Frank is right; but I want to keep this light.

Senator Cruz prefaced this observation with a little "psychoanalysis." His use of the word prompted me to pop some popcorn before reading any further:

Let me do a little psychoanalysis. If you look at ‘‘Star Trek: The Next Generation,’’ it basically split James T. Kirk into two people. Picard was Kirk’s rational side, and William Riker was his passionate side. I prefer a complete captain. 

The Internet isn't having it. Actual fans were quick to point out that Cruz had forgotten Mr. Spock who represented reason to Kirk's passion. And how could any true Trekker have forgotten Spock? Poser!

Both shows bifurcated passion and reason into two separate characters. The only difference is Next Generation flipped who sat in the captain's chair. And, of course, both shows were soap boxes for their liberal creator Gene Roddenberry. Indeed, the Federation is a socialist utopia. Cruz's interpretation was pretty blinkered. Even actor William Shatner nixed the notion. I think Senator Cruz is perhaps confusing Captain Kirk with Shatner's Denny Crane character on "Boston Legal."

This is hardly the stupidest thing that Ted Cruz has ever said. Nor is it an isolated instance of his missing the whole point. When filibustering against Obamacare, Cruz had quoted Dr. Seus' Green Eggs and Ham, a book whose central message advocates trying new things. And Cruz's Kirk comparison pales with his saying that John F. Kennedy would be a Republican today - a widely recycled talking point made by Rush Limbaugh and many other Republican pundits.

Indeed, Ted Cruz is just one example of a larger pattern of reactionaries getting things ass-backwards. Likewise, racist Ted Nugent has compared himself with Civil Rights Movement heroine Rosa Parks and religious "libertarian" Glenn Beck has claimed that the infamously anti-religious Thomas Paine was a Creationist. As I wrote before, I cannot wait until homophobes try to co-opt Harvey Milk.

Of course, the right's selective attention is nothing new. Consider conservative Christians who do not turn the other cheek, judge not, or give to the poor. My book likewise argues that conservatives scorn everything America is supposed to stand for - liberty, equality, and democracy. I suggest this may explain why they are so quick to question others' patriotism. I also noted other parallels:

Robert Bork’s constitutional “Originalism” is a great deal like religious fundamentalism. Both insist on a “strict literal interpretation” of sacred texts while twisting them into pretzels. Both promote fervor over consistency and group loyalty eclipses any political principle.

Examples are legion, but we are seeing a lot more of them in popular culture - particularly science fiction and fantasy as these geeky genres become increasingly mainstreamed. 

Consider the coup at the Hugo Awards where conservative activists gamed the vote because they thought these genres had been taken over by "political correctness." They forget that science fiction has been teaching tolerance since at least the 1950s. It has always been a vehicle for critiquing social problems. By taking us to future worlds, it invites us to look at our present one with new eyes - the more objective and less defensive eyes of outsiders. The reactionaries' absurd platform prompted Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin to marvel in disbelief, "I mean, we’re SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY FANS, we love to read about aliens and vampires and elves, are we really going to freak out about Asians and Native Americans?" (emphasis original) Likewise, earlier this year, Men's Rights Activists (MRAs) boycotted Mad Max: Fury Road, because they thought it was "feminist propaganda." Never mind that the film franchise had always critiqued toxic masculinity.

Nor is this the first time that conservatives have misinterpreted Star Trek. Almost a year ago, I blogged in this post about a clueless, homophobic Trekker who objected to a lesbian scene in a Star Trek novel. As I wrote then, "If you have a problem with any form of tolerance, you are in the wrong fandom." To that, I should add, "You are also in the wrong country."

There are serious issues here. But, for now, I am just going to nosh on popcorn and enjoy the show.

A Confederacy of Deniers

Two weeks ago, an avowed white supremacist named Dylann Roof entered a historic African American church in Charleston, South Carolina and shot nine members dead during Bible study. He told his victims he was doing it because they were black. He said, "You rape our women, and you're taking over the country. And you have to go." He said he wanted to start a race war.

Naturally, Fox News promptly dismissed racism as the cause and spun it as an assault on religion. The Neo-Nazi site Stormfront made the same suggestion. Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum wondered "What other rationale could there be?" besides a hatred of faith? Another presidential aspirant, Jeb Bush, said he did not know what was on the shooter's mind. And yet another GOP hopeful, Rick Perry, thought it must have been drugs.

In the wake of the tragedy, the state lowered most official flags to half mast. All except one: the Confederate battle flag flying in front of the statehouse. By state law, that would take a vote of the legislature with a two thirds majority. It reignited the Confederate flag controversy nation-wide.

Normally, I would approach a story like this historically. It's what I do and I like to think I have a gift for explaining history. Most bloggers go right to the politics because they are predominantly political junkies whereas I am more of a history geek, albeit a particularly political history geek.

I am going to check that habit today because there are a lot of excellent very historically-grounded articles out there on the topic. One is Ta-Nehisi Coates' post "What This Cruel War Was Over." It points out that the South's plantation aristocrats had no problem saying they were seceding over slavery. Trying to emulate Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence, each Confederate state wrote their own list of grievances called Articles of Secession. These documents repeatedly cite their fiery desire to defend slavery. Another important article is Doug Muder's "Not a Tea Party, a Confederate Party," which looks at what really motivates the political right. Although it was posted almost a year ago and therefore not about the shooting or the current flag discussion, it remains relevant and explains much.

There are many helpful articles out there, but between these two, you pretty much have the gist of it.

But the political fallout has been particularly interesting to watch thus far. It was both surprising and bracing to witness most of the GOP presidential hopefuls call for the flag to be removed. Granted, some were braver than others, but the general consensus was encouraging. Republican governors throughout the South climbed on the bandwagon. Even Glenn Beck said flying the Confederate flag "makes no sense." Had the GOP evolved beyond using the infamous Southern Strategy of speaking in racist code talk, as some have argued?

Well, not quite. Other Republican pundits circled the wagons to keep the South from bolting from the party. Rush Limbaugh said removing the flag was about "destroying the South" and warned that banning the American flag would be next. The Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol also rode to the defense of Dixie's honor. "The Left's 21st century agenda: expunging every trace of respect, recognition or acknowledgment of Americans who fought for the Confederacy."  Bill O'Reilly likewise said that the Confederate battle flag represents bravery to many people - as if the same thing could not be said for the Nazi swastika or any other symbol of oppression that had ever had an army behind it. It was an absurd evasion because a flag, by definition, represents a particular side or cause and not how well people fought for it. And, of course, Ann Coulter trotted out her long discredited argument that liberals are the real racists since Democrats were the party of the Confederacy and Jim Crow - again ignoring that the two major parties had traded regional bases after the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Then, Rush Limbaugh made the same argument.

As I wrote in my book, "You cannot be the party of Lincoln after embracing Jefferson Davis." They have long enjoyed having it both ways. Looks like they can't now. Will they be forced to choose? How will it shake out? Will it turn brother against brother? Will Reagan's Eleventh Commandment be broken? Maybe repeatedly? I am hoping for an overt party schism in the GOP, but that probably will not happen. More likely, it will only depress GOP turn out as the candidates disappoint the fringe.

Of course, as far as the electoral college goes, low turn out might not matter. The GOP will still hold most of the South. South Carolina's black population is significant and the shooting might be enough to boost turnout there, but the rest of the South is pretty locked in.

Or I might be wrong and we will be treated to the spectacle of these Tea Party darlings getting called RINOs ("Republicans In Name Only") by their former foot soldiers. One can only hope.

But far more important than this armchair election analysis is the struggle going on in the Republican Party. You can say that the flag is simply a symbolic issue, but symbols are important. The killer, Dylann Roof, certainly thought so. He could not get enough of the Confederate flag, to say nothing of the flags of other white supremacist regimes like white Rhodesia and Apartheid South Africa. Like the Confederacy, white nationalists romanticize these governments as noble lost causes. It is important that conservatives confront the connection and the history with it. Otherwise, the result will be more Dylann Roofs.

On Roman Baptists & Danbury Catholics

I want to comment on the Charleston, SC shooting and the related Confederate flag controversy, but that will require a longer post. Instead, as a place holder, I am writing a post on the religious right.

Conservatives work very hard to ignore or misconstrue historical documents that contradict them. One that "strict constructionists" cannot honestly grapple with is Thomas Jefferson's famous letter to the Danbury Baptists in which he spoke of the wall of separation between church and state. Jefferson wrote:

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.

Conservatives ignore (or don't know about) two highly ironic facts about the exchange's historical context.

First is the fact that Baptists were always all about keeping religion between the individual and God. It is a liberal principle to be sure - which is why Jefferson was agreeing with them - but it is also a bedrock Baptist principle that many Baptists had unfortunately forgotten. It goes back to the origin of their sect. Under Henry VIII, England broke from the Catholic Church in 1534 and formed the Anglican Church. But for many English Protestants, the Anglican Church still had too many leftover Catholic trappings so they formed their own splinter sects. Since the Anglican Church is a state church, with the English monarch at its head in place of the pope, the English government began stamping out such heresy.

Which brings us to the second ironic fact. The Danbury Baptists were writing to Thomas Jefferson because they feared for their religious freedom. They were then still a minority and they were worried about their rights. In his reply, Jefferson was saying that their belief aligned with his and clarified that this liberal constitutional principle defended their rights. Thus, the Danbury Baptists wrote Thomas Jefferson for two inter-related reasons that conservatives overlook.

Do you object to my using the word liberal? Well, then let me show you a similar exchange of letters between revolutionary era Roman Catholics and George Washington. Just like the Danbury Baptists, these Catholics wrote George Washington with the same concern. Maryland, you may remember, was founded to be a haven for persecuted English Catholics just as Pennsylvania was founded as a haven for Quakers. Washington wrote back, assuring them that rising liberalism would protect their rights:

As mankind become[s] more liberal they will be more apt to allow, that all those who conduct themselves as worthy members of the Community are equally entitled to the protection of civil Government. I hope ever to see America among the foremost nations in examples of justice and liberality.

Conservatives say that the establishment clause was only meant to protect religion from government - not to protect government from religion. Basically, they argue that the wall of separation has a one-way door in it. It is an absurd argument because once any religion gets a hold of government, the door will open the other way. That is both obvious and undeniable. As James Madison asked, “Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity in exclusion of all other religions may establish, with the same ease, any particular sect of Christians in exclusion to all other sects?”

Today, both Catholics and Protestants have been free from persecution for quite some time. In fact, the conservative ones have joined forces to legislate where they think their religions overlap - to the injury of liberal Christians, atheists, and people of other faiths such as Hindus, Buddhists, and Muslims. Of course, this ecumenical enterprise does not include feeding the poor, turning the other cheek, or refraining from throwing the first stone. They legislate their morality oblivious to any irony, hypocrisy, or history - all of which are obvious to everyone else. As Ben Franklin remarked, "If we look back into history for the character of present sects in Christianity, we shall find few that have not in their turns been persecutors, and complainers of persecution."  The difference is today they can be both at the same time by claiming that Christians are oppressed in America.

Of course, big tent conservative Christianity is nothing new. It has tried to subvert secularism in America from day one. Thomas Jefferson illustrated this in his Autobiography where he discussed the passage of Virginia’s Act for Religious Freedom:

Where the preamble declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed by inserting “Jesus Christ,” so that it would read “A departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion;” the insertion was rejected by the great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mohammedan, the Hindoo [sic] and Infidel of every denomination.

-  Thomas Jefferson, Writings of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Andrew Adgate Lipscomb and Albert Ellery Bergh (Washington DC: Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association, 1905), 1:67.

This is what America was always meant to be and conservatives have often sabotaged and postponed it. Our constitution is full of safeguards designed to protect us from ourselves - from our foolishness, forgetfulness, hypocrisy, and tyrannic tendencies. The establishment clause should be the most obvious safeguard of all.

Another Oppophor

I have invented a sniglet.

A sniglet, for those of you who did not watch HBO’s “Not Necessarily the News” back in the early 1980s, is "any word that doesn't appear in the dictionary, but should." One from the show that I will always fondly remember is “cinemuck” – the gunk on the movie theater floor that sticks to the soles of your shoes.

The political word is full of odd phenomena. Most have coined terms, but some do not. If we were Germans, we could just take a descriptive sentence and remove all the spaces to arrive at a new word. But Americans are generally more imaginative and less literal – or at least pithier. We like to shorten things to save time.

So, here is my modest proposed contribution to political discourse:

Oppophor /ˈä-pə-fôr'/ (n): A political metaphor stolen from your opponent and distorted to poorly make the opposite point. Invoking history which teaches the opposite lesson is a common oppohor. Oppophors are often made by conservatives as part of an “I’m rubber, you’re glue” argument. For example, take their trying to portray gay rights activists as intolerant, intrusive Puritans.

Of course, this oppophor has precedent in conservative circles. As I wrote in this blog, it is akin to an earlier one in which a talk radio host warned listeners about a "witch hunt" against Christians. In both cases, social conservatives are the ones with the torches, pitchforks, and big, shiny hat buckles.

Such poor metaphors often go beyond being clunky, stretched, or inapt because they are deliberately absurd and jarring. They are an attempt to be clever and outrageous. Of course, I do not object to being provoking so long as you are honest. But this device tries to pass off dishonesty as irony or just an innocent "thought experiment" - an interesting intellectual exercise. They mine shock value by arguing that the counterfactual is actually only counterintuitive – if not the victim of a slanderous liberal media conspiracy.

Conservatives often posit that their liberal opponents are “the real [racists / fascists / sexists / hypocrites / prudes / warmongers / enemies of the poor / elitists / etc.].” Thomas Frank has written a lot about the right co-opting the word “elitist” and portraying the party of the rich as the political protector of ordinary working Joes. In their narrative, social workers are snobs and oil barons are just plain folks. I look forward to conservatives calling liberals “the real homophobes.”

The goal of such metaphors is not to convert your debate opponent but to stun them with your chutzpah. It is rhetorical shock and awe. Oppophors should backfire spectacularly and discredit its users. And they do. But they also play so well to the base that the end result is a net gain. The base, harried by accurate critiques, is hungry for any sort of rhetorical table-turning – however incoherent.

Unfortunately, this often goes way beyond metaphors to literal beliefs. As I wrote before in both my book and this blog, Ann Coulter had once claimed that liberals fought the Civil War to preserve slavery and instituted Jim Crow laws afterwards. Likewise, Reverend Pat Robertson had said that liberals are punitive, addicted to building prisons, and responsible for the War on Drugs. More recently, Robertson argued that Hillary Clinton wanted to turn the clock "back to the 50s."

But whether presented as a thought experiment or as an actual fact, the goal and effect remain the same – to co-opt liberal arguments, to subvert or invert them. The fact that Jonah Goldberg writes exclusive content for Glen Beck’s paid subscribers illustrates this. Both make absurd Nazi analogies about liberals, but Beck and his audience take them literally and Goldberg surely knows this.

Oppophor: The sniglet for our times.

Fool's Goldwater

Yesterday, a novel argument against LGBT rights came to light.

A 2013 video interview with Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) surfaced in which he philosophized, "I don’t think I’ve ever used the word gay rights, because I don’t really believe in rights based on your behavior." The quote re-revealed the Tea Party's chronic freedom-hostile proclivities.

No, rights are not based on a particular behavior - they are based on being a human being. And those rights affirm you can do whatever you like as long as you do not harm anyone else. That is where behavior comes in. There is nothing libertarian or liberty-friendly about Rand Paul's argument.

Ironically, somebody needs to quote the late Senator Barry Goldwater (R-AZ) at him. When Goldwater was accused of turning liberal for supporting gay rights in the 1990s, he replied, "I am a conservative Republican, but I believe in democracy and the separation of church and state. The conservative movement is founded on the simple tenet that people have the right to live life as they please as long as they don’t hurt anyone else in the process." Things sure have changed.

In my book, I called the Tea Party "warmed-over Goldwaterism" but perhaps I should have said southern-fried. As I wrote, "Goldwater had tried to move his party’s regional base from East to West, but it instead shifted from North to South. The Arizona Senator had created a monster that later turned on him." But, to be accurate, the seeds of these reactionary tendencies were apparent in his 1964 campaign. The racist dog whistles were already there. His protests to the contrary, Goldwater had later mellowed and conservative purists hounded him for it until his dying day. Only the political utility of the word "liberty" had allowed his posthumous political rehabilitation among Republicans. The rhetoric of rugged individualism is essential to the GOP's re-branding and Goldwater's image certainly supplies that. It's cowboy rather than klansman.

LBGT rights is one of the quickest litmus tests of having a true libertarian temperament. Abortion rights (which Goldwater also supported) is another. The Paul family - father and son - spectacularly fail both. One anti-Ron Paul graphic said it all - "Government so small it fits in your uterus."

I wrote quite a bit about libertarianism's built-in authoritarian drift.  Their entire philosophy is rhetorical planned obsolescence. In Cato's Letters, John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon wrote, "Liberty can never subsist without equality." Libertarianism is liberty without the equality, and thus such liberty has the lifespan of a fruit fly. Some libertarians have even become monarchists. Interestingly, the full Cato quote also advocates economic equality - which I imagine the libertarian Cato Institute is unaware of: 

Liberty can never subsist without Equality, nor Equality be long preserved without an Agrarian Law, or something like it; for when Men’s Riches become immeasurably or surprisingly great, a People, who regard their own Security, ought to make a strict Enquiry how they came by them, and oblige them to take down their own Size, for fear of terrifying the Community, or mastering it. In every Country, and under every Government, particular Men may be too rich.*

But whatever the issue, orthodox libertarianism is a freedom-toxic sham. As Rand Paul's argument illustrates, its entire purpose is to twist liberty into its polar opposite. It is just a circus of clumsy rhetorical gymnastics designed to deny people their rights.

________

* John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon, Cato’s Letters: or, Essays on Liberty, Civil and Religious (New York: Da Capo Press, 1971), 2:16.

Your Neighbor, Big Brother

How can conservatives complain about government intrusiveness when so many of them choose to live in places with neighborhood associations? Seriously, conservatives - especially religious ones - are always in other people's business. Their claim that they "just want to be left alone" would make a cat laugh.

By definition, reactionaries do not love individual liberty or individuality - quite the opposite. The right's libertarian rhetoric is all about ignoring or promoting the tyranny of your neighbors. That is why they want "small government," "states rights," and "local control " - because local governments are more likely to oppress, seek uniformity, and police morality. And when the federal government intervenes by, say, ending Jim Crow laws or legalizing abortion,  they call it "tyranny." How dare these big government bullies not let us bully whomever we like!

Local government's oppressive tendency was acknowledged in our country's founding documents. In Federalist #10, James Madison - who is often called "the Father of the Constitution" - argued that having lots of different political factions and interests often cancel each other out, thereby preventing any one of them from becoming too dominant. Therefore, a bigger country would be freer because it would have more groups. In sum, diversity preserves liberty:

The smaller the society, the fewer probably will be the distinct parties and interests composing it; the fewer the distinct parties and interests, the more frequently will a majority be found of the same party; and the smaller the number of individuals composing a majority, and the smaller the compass within which they are placed, the more easily will they concert and execute their plans of oppression. Extend the sphere, and you take in a greater variety of parties and interests; you make it less probable that a majority of the whole will have a common motive to invade the rights of other citizens; or if such a common motive exists, it will be more difficult for all who feel it to discover their own strength, and to act in unison with each other.*

As I wrote in my book, it is very difficult to read that Madison quote today and not immediately think of the Civil Rights struggle. Change came once we saw ending Jim Crow as a national responsibility, not a local problem.

Conservatives often forget that there is no right to deny or violate others their rights. Your right to swing your fist ends at the tip of my nose. But the school yard bully cries foul when the teacher pulls him off another kid. And if the bully has a favorite target, it is the kids who are different. To the adult bully, might makes right and "big government" is a meddlesome schoolmarm. Their resentful  "nanny state" rhetoric is not just about being forced to share their toys, but about being punished for hitting. It is about being told, "Be nice to your sister." Whereas "small government" - meaning their government - believes that "boys will be boys." And such boys don't leave others alone. They mess with you. Which is to say they are pretty intrusive.

So when authoritarian conformists who live in gated communities that dictate how tall your grass is wax indignant about government threats to individual liberty, we should probably take it with a grain of salt.

________

* Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, The Federalist Papers (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 54.

My Landmine Analogy

I almost made it through this month without a post. I found this in an old notebook and tweaked it. I believe it accurately describes how many conservatives conceptualize responsibility.

Let’s say a terrorist is planting landmines all over town. No group claims responsibility and no demands are made. Civil officials quickly put out advisories to reduce the risk. The public is warned to keep off the grass, for example. Are future victims thus at fault afterwards?

Of course not, because accidents will still happen – even to the most cautious person. A falling tree limb might detonate a mine next to the sidewalk. Or you could be inside your home when a dog runs by your picture window, showering you with flying glass shrapnel as the mine goes off. And the terrorist remains the first cause in any case. That cannot be denied.

We humans have a huge impact on our environment. And, for both better and worse, we are very adaptable animals. Usually, this is an advantage, but it also means we are too quick to accept the new normal as natural. Conservative pundits would likely treat the incidents above like being hit by lightning.

One big problem with seeing the market as an unknowable benevolent force of nature is that it is a human creation and a deception is in effect when accountability is removed. Every major industry tries to create a favorable environment for their product. Suppose the man planting landmines sells metal detectors or owns stock in a company that does. It is a far fetched possibility to be sure, but how is the conservative approach to pollution, unsafe products, or any other public health hazard any different? They want man-made hazards to be treated as natural hazards – treat the faulty product like a tornado. As Rand Paul said of the BP Deepwater Horizon offshore oil platform explosion, “I think it’s part of this sort of blame-game society in the sense that it’s always got to be somebody’s fault instead of the fact that maybe sometimes accidents happen.” That is basically their philosophy behind tort reform.

Now, let’s say your boss wants you to mow the lawn outside the office. It has gotten pretty tall since the panic started and the chances are pretty slim that there is a landmine on that particular parcel of land. After all, it is a big city and they have only found five mines so far and none in the last week. Even so, he does not want to do it himself. Go figure.

Conservatives, like corporations, are good at externalizing, risks, costs, and responsibility. So, if you find a landmine the hard way, it will because you were "careless." Like the BP oil rig, coal mine owners routinely ignore safety regulations and fines. After all, safety is expensive and time-consuming – it cuts into the profit margins and slows down the work. And when the coal dust ignites or a cave-in buries men miles under a mountain, you can always blame the miners themselves - or safety regulations.

A lot of conservatives have considerable difficulty grasping how basic responsibility works. Enough of them have this handicap that it has become an organizing principle. I think this is the case for two reasons.

The first I write about in my book. It is their propensity to identify with power and blame the victim. It’s sympathy for the alpha dog. As I write, “Usually, they are either bullies or bystanders who reflexively sympathize with power. Whether it is rape, sexual harassment, unsafe working conditions, or anything else, conservatives’ automatic response is to blame the victim and/or defend the violator.” Indeed, “They see bullying in stopping bullying.” They seem unclear on the concept:

It is almost as if conservatives do not quite grasp that being a bully makes you the bad guy. They want to be seen as the good guys, but they also like to bully and do not see any contradiction there. It bewilders them. This is a result of their tribal us-vs.-them mindset. To them, being the good guy is a matter of birthright rather than behavior. Everything your side does is clever and justified – it is only treachery if the other side does it. You are loyal to your team and you do not snitch.

We have seen a lot of this recently. Fox News’ reflexive sympathy for killer cops is certainly motivated in part by racism. After all, they do not talk about the importance of “innocent until proven guilty” in any other circumstance. And they jump to conclusions while saying we should not jump to conclusions. In the same breath as saying we should wait for the evidence they will call the victim a “thug” – even when all we know about the victim is that he is black. So, yes, there is definitely a bit of racism at work here. But there is also an authoritarian adoration of power that complicates understanding simple lines of responsibility. The two things are distinct, but linked.

The other problem conservatives have with understanding responsibility is their either/or approach to it. Everything boils down to individual responsibility – there is no collective responsibility for anything or any systemic injustices to fix either subtle or overt. Everything happens in a vacuum, as far as they are concerned. History and poverty are non-issues to them. If you point toward any societal factors, such as the fact that countries with smaller wealth gaps have less crime, they will accuse you of denying individual responsibility – as if the two things are mutually exclusive.

This dictates their thinking in questions of credit as well as blame. During the 2012 election, both Elizabeth Warren and Barack Obama made the point that success was a combination of individual ability and social infrastructure. As Warren put it, “There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear: you moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for; you hired workers the rest of us paid to educate.” Summing up she added, “[P]art of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.” And Obama echoed this point in his “You didn’t build that” speech that conservatives willfully misinterpreted. “The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together.” As I summed up, “Just as you need both hydrogen and oxygen to make water, prosperity comes from the combination of individual and the collective efforts. That is just common sense.” I also added that this was a very tame version of what Benjamin Franklin had written two centuries before on taxes:

Private property therefore is a creature of society, and is subject to the calls of that society, whenever its necessities shall require it, even to the last farthing: its contributions therefore to the public exigencies are not to be considered as conferring a benefit on the public, entitling the contributors to the distinctions of honor and power, but as a return of an obligation previously received, or the payment of a just debt.*

That was the social contract that Warren was talking about. 

Doctor Franklin probably made his case so forcefully because he had to. Individual responsibility is easy to explain: It is obvious and needs no advocates. Therefore, the subtler social factors need greater attention and explanation. They need to be stressed. No liberal or leftist that I have ever met denies there is an element of individual responsibility – that is a conservative caricature.

But whether it is credit or blame being assigned, conservatives are ideologically allergic to acknowledging collective responsibility for anything. Conservatives almost seem incapable of taking in the larger picture and seeing interconnections. And this trips up their thinking on issues besides responsibility. For example, Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman once explained the problem with austerity policies in a compelling way that anyone should be able to understand:

An economy is not like a household. A family can decide to spend less and try to earn more. But in the economy as a whole, spending and earning go together: My spending is your income; your spending is my income. If everyone tries to slash spending at the same time, incomes will fall – and unemployment will soar.

But conservative ideology is wired to ignore that explanation. To them, an economy is like a household – period. There is no outside context or environment. So, tighten your belt and work harder. And, if you step on a landmine in the meantime, you only have yourself to blame.

________

*Benjamin Franklin, Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography: An Authoritative Text, Backgrounds, Criticism, ed. J.A. Leo LeMay and P.M. Zall (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1986), 222.

Ferguson

I have nothing original to add about yesterday's grotesque grand jury decision in Ferguson, MO. Instead, I will just leave you with a few links from those who said these things first and better.

The first is a broadcast from a local public radio show called Strange Fruit. Yes, like the Billie Holiday song about lynching, appropriately enough. The program ordinarily looks at gay issues from the perspective of people of color, but this special episode focused on Ferguson. It distills many of the issues pretty brilliantly and explains how bizarre the legal proceedings were. (More on the later here and here.) The episode pretty much covers every aspect I can think of, so it is a good starting point. Give it a listen. It is worth your time.

And finally, some wise words from Tim Wise about white denial. He wrote it in advance, anticipating the decision. It gives a good summary of the events leading up to it.

A Quasi-Apologia

No doubt you have noticed my shameless book promotions. Rest assured, there is shame.

I am still uncomfortable in this particular aspect of being an author. I absolutely do not have the temperament of a salesman; but in the world of self-publishing, that is one of the many hats I have to wear. The author hat hates the sales hat especially. I am instinctively wary of anything that feel like advertising. They say "Write the book you want to read." And I did. But my own advertising makes me not want to read it because, well, it sounds like advertising. So I have already alienated my core audience.

For example, yesterday, I posted elsewhere a link to the product page with the caption "Annoyed with the election results? Try this possible tonic." It felt crassly opportunistic. Particularly since even political people are sick of campaigns at this point - probably more than most. For example, my inbox is totally bloated with email appeals. Please fuck off.

But here is the thing: My message was genuine. I know I am biased, but really think my book is necessary. We need to call out conservatives on their phony patriotism. That is, after all, why I wrote the book in the first place. I do not mean that we should mimic their McCarthyist tactics. But we do need to have an argument over what America is about.

I am not naive enough to call it a "dialogue" because I do not think it is possible at this point. The "elephant echo chamber" is hermetically sealed tight against reason. You can try arguing with your Fox News-watching father-in-law, but it is probably not the best use of your time.  But, hey, if you do go that route - perhaps for the edutainment of the spectators - my book has a lot of good rhetorical ammunition. Just saying.

But arguing specifics is difficult when your opponents have a whacked worldview. The most obvious and incontrovertible policy point goes ignored if it does not conform to the other person's central narrative. It just bounces off their mental force field. Faulty fundamental assumptions must be debunked if we are to kick the gibberish out of politics. And the elephant in the living room that we are all ignoring is what conservatism truly is - a viceral aversion to liberty, equality, and democracy.

Of course, conservatives won't listen to that conversation either. But I am not talking about conservatives. I am talking to liberals - liberals and undecideds. We all need to understand two inter-related realities:

The first is that politics is inherently adversarial. Obama does not get that. Bill Clinton didn't either. Most democratic politicians don't. And we are all quite literally poorer for it. I touched on this in my previous blog post, "The Importance of Ideology." Franklin Delano Roosevelt's 1936 Madison Garden campaign speech springs to mind. It is the one in which FDR famously said of plutocracy and privilege, "Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me - and I welcome their hatred." Oh, how I would love to hear Obama say that!

I am certainly not the first person to say this. But what I think I bring to the table is pointing out the obvious - but almost never acknowledged - conflict between conservatism and patriotism. That is the second thing. Combine that with a little fighting spirit, and we can win some stuff.

So, yeah, buy my book - or borrow it. And talk about it. Review it. Because I do think it is needed.

The Importance of Ideology

I regard "ideology" and "morality" as the two most dangerous forces on this 
 planet. About "ideology" I have expressed my suspicions elsewhere; here I 
will only mention John Adams's verdict that shortening "ideology" to "idiocy" 
would save some space and add a great deal to clarity.

- Robert Anton Wilson, Natural Law: Or "Don't Put a Rubber on your Willie"

Ideology certainly has its critics, but with all due respect to Messrs. Adams and Wilson, those with none are often no less idiotic. Ideology is like fire - it has equal potential to be destructive or constructive. It heats homes, cooks food, and allows us to make countless things like pottery and glass. Fire is essential.

The idea that the Democratic Party is floundering without its progressive vision is certainly not new. For example, Thomas Frank has written quite a bit on this and, in the interests of full disclosure, I quote him quite a bit in my book. But Frank's latest article in Salon nails it.

Frank opines that we keep having these doomed loved affairs with post-partisan, post-ideological technocrats that fail to understand the inherently adversarial nature of politics. They reach across the aisle, compromising in advance, thinking their Republican opponents will be touched by their patriotic goodwill gesture rather than sense weakness and demand more. The result is standard bearers like Michael Dukakis who got Willie Hortoned and John Kerry who got swift-boated. If the candidate has incredible charisma, like Bill Clinton or Barack Obama, they survive the election only to get bullied by a thuggish Congress. But most mere mortals are not that politically gifted, so things rarely even get that far.

I think the problem is both tactical and temperamental. But, of course, those are related.

First, with near suicidal naiveté, liberals believe that we can all agree that we want competent government when conservatives actually want to sabotage whatever government they cannot eliminate entirely. In Thomas Frank's book, The Wrecking Crew, he shows how this has been the corporate right's modus operandi since at least the 1920s. Business association literature of the period argued that the best bureaucrat is a bad bureaucrat. They have an ideological commitment to this idea.

Even conservative columnist P.J. O'Rourke admitted this when he quipped, "The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work, and then they get elected and prove it." And, as we all saw, that governing philosophy disastrously cumulates in the words "Heckuvah job, Brownie!" 

Until Democrats stop calling Republicans "the part of no" and start calling it the party of sabotage, they will continue to misunderstand and underestimate their opponents' motives and methodology. Republicans have a vicious, anti-civic ideology, but it is better than none because it at least gives them drive. Democrats not so much. Actually, they also have an ideology, albeit by default: to make things better rather than worse. But they refuse to embrace it except in the most tepid, halfhearted fashion. As I wrote in my book: 

Conservatives’ anti-civic attitude does not stop at defunding public schools or at demonizing teachers unions. It threatens every single bolt of our rusting infrastructure. Conservatism desires the literal disintegration of American civilization. I would say they are the secular equivalent of Evangelicals who want to hasten the Apocalypse, except they are not that secular. But the impulse is identical. They yearn to see the Last Days at Galt’s Gulch and this selfish, pessimistic yen is the very essence of every Glenn Beck broadcast. Starkly put, we are in a fight between those who want to improve society and those who want to implode it. And those who see tyranny in empathy have plainly chosen implosion.

Second, liberals are too quick to compromise while conservatives are too resistant to - and too many liberals react by trying to make up the difference and meet them more than halfway. Of course, this is not to say that conservatives never compromise - but only when they recognize that they absolutely have to and that requires a minor miracle. Conservatives have been known to walk away from free gains on the table because they felt entitled to the whole loaf. As Paul Krugman had admitted in an otherwise laudatory Rolling Stone article on President Obama:

Obama was indeed naive: He faced scorched-earth Republican opposition from Day One, and it took him years to start dealing with that opposition realistically. Furthermore, he came perilously close to doing terrible things to the U.S. safety net in pursuit of a budget Grand Bargain; we were saved from significant cuts to Social Security and a rise in the Medicare age only by Republican greed, the GOP's unwillingness to make even token concessions.

Liberals are quick to compromise because they cherish fairness and cooperation. They want to be magnanimous in victory and see pressing their advantage as being a bully. As Robert Frost once joked “A liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel.” This is a uniquely liberal handicap. Obviously, conservatives have no such qualms. Indeed, they don't even know what qualms are.

Conservatives love bullies - they celebrate them. That is why the Tea Party embraced torturer Allen West. It is the single biggest thing they liked about New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. Is is why they adore Russian strongman Vladimir Putin. Rush Limbaugh, Bill OReilly ... the right's thug love is boundless. (Thomas Frank also discussed the right's predilection toward bullying in The Wrecking Crew.) As I wrote in my book, "This explains the bully/wimp format of debate shows like Hannity and Colmes and the Buchanan and Kinsley era Crossfire." The burly conservative jock pounds on the skinny liberal geek. Our politics have long been an 1980s teen film.

Liberals naively project their own patriotic non-partisanship on conservatives by assuming they also want what is best for America and that specific policy differences are piddly little things that can be surmounted with sufficient good will.  But as I wrote, this ignores their ideological zeal:

Chris Christie’s career also illustrates conservatism’s callousness. Hurricane Sandy hit the east coast in the midst of the 2012 election. President Obama temporarily suspended his campaign to prioritize federal relief efforts. That was his job. Chris Christie, in turn, did his job and cooperated with Obama. The photo ops of them inspecting the devastation together told the hopeful story of Democrats and Republicans putting aside their partisan differences in a time of crisis. Of course, this infuriated conservative purists who accused Christie of helping Obama look presidential at Mitt Romney’s expense. But what was Christie supposed to do? Refuse help? Hide from the cameras?

Yes. In fact, their ideology demanded it. Election aside, they felt accepting any help was inherently a betrayal of conservative principles. But strategy and ideology are one. Voters saw events torpedo the right’s anti-government rhetoric at the most inopportune moment. Americans were glad to have their Uncle Sam and, to hardcore conservatives, that was the real tragedy which should have been avoided at all costs.

Of course, afterwards, we learned that Christie used hurricane relief money to reward obedience and punish dissent. But the point here is conservatives' attitude toward pulling together. It can be summed up in Grover Norquist's equating bipartisanship with date rape - a tortured metaphor that suggests that he does not really know what consent means, although I suppose we should applaud the fact that he recognizes there is such a thing as date rape. When Obama inherited the greatest economic catastrophe since the Great Depression, Rush Limbaugh summed up conservative cooperation: "I hope he fails."

I think part of the problem is that Democrats do not understand the message in Mad Men. It is a TV show about the importance of ideology. In an article in the Washington Post, social historian Stephanie Coontz (another author I quote a lot in my book) has called it the most feminist show on the air. It is a show about why we need feminism and the untenable circumstances that it rose to correct.

The show has many strong women characters who are frustrated and unhappy because they are individually playing by society's ludicrous rules and losing. They have not yet realized that they need to get together and collectively break those rules and rewrite them. Let's look at a few:

Betty Draper is not a weak woman by any means, but she still thinks that being the perfect housewife with the right husband is the central recipe for happiness. She has steely determination, but it is all channeled within the system. In the virgin/whore dichotomy that society uses to classify women, she represents propriety. As a mother of two, she is not technically a virgin. But her repressed sexuality comes close. 

Joan plays by a very different script. She uses her sexuality to navigate the good old boys environment of the advertising firm, but it proves to be a limited form of liberation. And when the initially timid Peggy advances beyond the secretarial pool to write ad copy and start to assert herself, Joan accuses her of not knowing her place. We see a limited form of sisterhood when Joan is first training Peggy. Joan warns Peggy about the treacherous terrain, pointing out one pitfall after another. Neither yet realizes that they should work together to fill-in those pits and transform the terrain. Again, they are operating in a pre-feminist world, playing by its rules and predictably losing. And that is because they have no ideology. 

 
Post-ideological Democrats can learn a lot from watching these pre-ideological women.